Earlier this summer, Deutsche Bank’s $2.5 billion settlement with U.S. and UK regulators investigating manipulation of the London interbank offered rates (LIBOR), appeared to falter.
The settlement reportedly came under scrutiny from regulators because the bank failed to preserve “internal electronic chat transcripts,” which could contain crucial evidence about the underlying incidents under investigation.
It shows how instant messaging platforms also called chat messages have gained importance as a communication system in certain office settings, particularly in the financial services industry. On Thursday, the eDiscovery software maker Recommind released the latest version of its review platform, called Axcelerate, which contains specific updates to enable improved search of instant messages and chat communications.
“Chat is the new email,” said Hal Marcus, director of product marketing for Recommind. “It’s supplanting email as the new rapid fire communications system and we’re now at the point where there’s a treasure trove of data in chat, and law firms need to analyse that data.”
The latest version of Axcelerate, 5.5, includes a number of upgrades including faster retrieval and processing of data, but Marcus stressed that its ability to search chat is one of its most important new features. He argued that many eDiscovery vendors have been stringing together solutions that fail to make chat searchable in an elegant format.
There are various platforms for chat including Google Chat, Skype, Slack, Bloomberg Instant and others, and Marcus said the Axcelerate should be able to handle most of these formats. [Bloomberg Instant is owned by Bloomberg LP, which also owns Bloomberg BNA.]
While these messaging services have been around for years, not all companies have fully embraced chat and created an internal automatic archiving system for chat as they have for email.
“I find the idea that they’re going to ban chat rooms … ludicrous,” the CEO of an online foreign-exchange research firm told Bloomberg News in 2013 when several companies were debating banning chat messaging.
In brief interviews, several eDiscovery vendors acknowledged that searching chat messages is still somewhat difficult.
Marcus said the new Axcelerate upgrades will eliminate metadata that makes it difficult to sort chat communications. One problem is that in chat there’s a great deal of data about people who sign into their computer, and automatically enter a chat room, or that sign out and automatically exit a chat room — without ever communicating anything. That metadata can make searching chat arduous.
Marcus said the new upgrade allows users to filter out such blank messages, and will also allow users to filter based on the number of people involved in a chat room and contains many other features. “Our system will make it really appear elegant,” said Marcus.